“Yes,” Riker says, blunt as always. “Is it working?”
“No.”
Riker rolls his eyes. “Look, you’re going to have to let it go, for the time being. It irritates me too, knowing that someone stole the pen right out from under our noses, but this situation is so complicated that we can’t stop running and turn back to pick up every loose end we drop. We have to keep moving forward with what we have. As soon as Bollinger frees up a security agent, we’ll take a look at the lockup tape. It might aid us in recovering the pen, or it might not. More than likely, someone who was smart enough to sneak into the office unseen was also smart enough to conceal their identity while doing so. We may have to accept the pen as a loss—”
“I know,” I butt in. “But it burns me that I can’t even get a glimpse of the bastard. I don’t want to wait.” I beat my fists against the wall, and immediately regret it. Pain surges up both my arms, fiery on the left, dull and achy on the right, and I double over, hissing. When it fades a few seconds later, and I right myself, I find Riker and Ella watching me, concerned.
“You know, Cal,” Ella says, “maybe you should go home and take a nap? You never did get a full sleep shift in, thanks to that shapeshifter.”
“But we’re on the clock here. We only have twenty-one hours to find the location of the next attack.” I tug at the bandages on my hand. “And we have so little manpower to start with. Surely there’s something I can help you guys with until we can get a security agent to release the tape. Come on. Anything?”
Riker shakes his head. “You can get some more rest and come back recharged, so that if we need you for a raid or an arrest, you’ve got enough energy to participate. You look like you’re about to fall over, Cal. Go home. Come back at, say, four o’clock. You can bring us dinner, if that’ll make you feel useful.”
“It won’t.”
Riker and Ella stare at me.
“All right,” I concede. “Fine. I’ll go take a freaking nap. But I’m not feeding you for free.”
Ella snorts, then pulls out her wallet, tossing a loose wad of cash that I have to stumble forward to catch. “Your truck’s in the garage, by the way. Desmond drove it over from Cooper’s house.” She hesitates on the word Cooper’s, and for an instant exposes how worried she is about the missing archivist. Ella knew Cooper for years before I even met him. She probably feels just as responsible as I do for not being able to protect him from the shapeshifter. Maybe more. It’s hard to tell with the way she masks her feelings when she’s neck-deep in a case. The mood she wears on her face at any given time never reflects the intensity of her actual experience.
The rest of my team acts the same way.
Compartmentalization, I think. Something I have yet to master.
The stubbornness tightening my chest begins to dissipate. “Thanks. I’ll head home now and come back at four, I guess.”
Ella waves. “See you then.”
Riker, leaning behind a stack of files to grab a new case, calls out, “I have a craving for pizza, if you know a good place, Cal.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers, sir,” I drawl.
“Says the man who broke his beggar rings”—Riker peeks over the top of the file stack—“again.”
My face heats up. “Point taken.”
I shuffle out the door and pull it closed behind me. As it’s clicking shut, I hear Riker say, “Did you ask Desmond what he did with the riddle card?”
Ella replies, “He said he left it in here, on the table. It must be hiding under one of these files.”
“Ella,” Riker groans, “there are hundreds.”
I snicker and plod off down the hall, preparing myself to start the hardest assignment I’ve had this entire case: not doing anything useful.
The drive back to my apartment is uneventful, even though events unfold all around me. As I zip down the highway, I spy the cloud of haze still hanging in the air above the disaster zone, slowly but surely growing thinner as the wind wears it away. Helicopters are out in force, spiraling around and around the perimeter of the convention center, news copters angling for a good shot, air evac copters waiting to be called in for another rescue, two police copters keeping the rest in line. Ground vehicles, sirens blaring, lights flashing, speed down the streets leading to and away from ground zero, carrying the injured to the already overwhelmed hospitals, then turning around to go pick up more as the rescuers dig new victims from the rubble.
I pass all this chaos in silence, not bothering to turn on the radio in my truck.
I don’t want to hear the reports. I know the reality.
Truck parked in my usual spot, I take the elevator up to my floor, wondering how the heck I’m supposed to fall asleep when I feel like I’m on a sugar high, aching to jump back into the action. I could be searching for Cooper right now, or aiding Naomi’s team, or even sitting in the task room, perusing the old case files with Ella and Riker. There’s so much to be done that sending me home feels like a waste, even though I understand why Ella and Riker want me to rest. I won’t be much use in a combat situation if I’m tripping over my own two feet from sheer exhaustion. But even so…
The elevator dings at my floor, the doors roll open, and I step out—
—to find Cooper Lee slumped against my apartment door.
My heart skips a beat, and then I’m running, boots pounding across the floor as I close the distance to my apartment as fast as humanly possible. I slide to a stop on my knees, a hand flying up to check Cooper’s neck for a pulse while my eyes quickly catalogue the rest of his body, on the hunt for obvious injuries.
Cooper is speckled here and there with blood, a smear on his cheek and temple, some droplets stained into his shirtsleeves and sweatpants, but there’s not enough to indicate a mortal wound. A few dark bruises dot his pale skin, one under his eye, like somebody punched him, another on his wrist, probably a defensive wound, a third spread across his collarbone and over the curve of his shoulder, like somebody with a large hand held him forcefully in place.
When I dig my fingers into his neck, desperate to find out if he’s alive or dead, the collar of his shirt shifts to the right, unveiling one injury that stands out above all the rest: a pair of identical puncture marks, side by side, at the base of his neck.
Fang marks.
A vampire bite.
A bolt of electric shock strikes my spine, and I scramble backward until my head thumps against the opposite wall. My lungs seize up, and I gasp. My vision wavers, and I screw my eyes shut. My stomach convulses, and I struggle not to vomit. My entire body shakes, and it’s all I can do not to fall over and curl up into a ball.
Get ahold of yourself, Kinsey, I command, and take care of Cooper Lee. You can freak out later!
My panic refuses to subside, however, so I resort to the nuclear option: I beat my stitched-up fist against the floor. Pain envelops me like a blanket of molten rock. A high-pitched cry escapes my tight throat, and my vision, black behind my eyelids, explodes into a starry night sky. Slowly, the panic attack subsides, my brain forced to choose between focusing on the intense pain or my irrational reaction to the implication that a vampire is roaming the streets of Aurora, right now, with myself and those close to me in their sights.
I sit against the wall, arms locked around my knees, until my breathing steadies.
Then I crack an eye open and see Cooper Lee lying where I left him. He hasn’t moved an inch, but with the short distance between us now, the rise and fall of his chest is visible. He’s not dead.
Cooper’s not dead. This vampire didn’t kill him like that vampire killed Mac.
Cooper’s alive, and he’s going to be okay. He’s going to be perfectly okay.
I unfurl from my fetal position and crawl on my hands and knees back over to Cooper. I check him one more time for any serious wounds, but all I find are more bruises and a few shallow cuts. There aren’t any signs of torture, or any wounds that require immediate medical attention. He’s a little worse for wear, but Ammit d
ealt Cooper a lot more damage last year.
I don’t know whether I should call Cooper lucky, or whether the vampire and shapeshifter never intended to hurt him in the first place. Maybe that shifter was bluffing the whole time. Maybe he abducted Cooper and handed him over to his boss for questioning about the fountain pen. Maybe this vampire isn’t out to leave a trail of eviscerated bodies like the last one I encountered. Maybe he’s on a different kind of mission.
Or maybe I’m reading this situation dead wrong. What if—?
I shake the nasty string of impending thoughts out of my head.
I can deal with my paranoia once Cooper is safe and settled.
Digging my key out of my pocket, I lean Cooper’s head against my chest and unlock the door. I push the door fully open, then I scoop Cooper into my arms, carefully lift him, ignoring the protests from my injuries, and carry him inside, to my living room. Once I lay him on the couch, I prop his head up with a pillow and cover him with the blanket I keep draped over the back cushion. About halfway through these motions, Cooper begins to stir.
He groans softly, eyelids fluttering before they open enough to get a glimpse of his surroundings. It takes a moment for the recognition to set in. “Cal?” he says with a slur. “Why am I at your place?”
I crouch next to him. “I was hoping you could tell me, Cooper. You’ve been missing for half the day. It looks like you got abducted from your house.”
“Abducted?” His blond eyebrows furrow as he tries to remember. “I went home, had a late-night snack and some tea, and got ready for bed. And then…then…someone grabbed me from behind when I walked into my bedroom.” His voice trembles. “He pinned me to the floor and demanded I tell him where the pen was. I said I didn’t have it, and he called me a liar and punched me in the face.” Cooper’s hand slips from underneath the blanket and prods the dark bruise under his eye. “Everything after that is blurry. There was a car, maybe? Driving somewhere? I…I don’t know.”
“Short-term memory loss isn’t uncommon after vampire bites,” I recite in a monotone, recalling a lesson from my DSI academy days.
“Vampire?” Cooper’s hand sinks to his neck, brushing over the puncture wounds. He gasps, and tears gather in his eyes. “Oh, god. I didn’t get turned, did I?”
I take his hand in my own and caress his knuckles. “Coop, if you’d been turned, I’m pretty sure it’d be obvious by this point. You know, the amber eyes and the super senses and the unquenchable thirst for human blood?”
“Oh, yeah. Right.” Cooper relaxes slightly, and sniffles. “It’s not really unquenchable, you know? They’re not thirsty all the time. That’s a myth.”
“You’d know better than I would, buddy. You’re smarter than me.”
Cooper tugs the blanket higher, covering his neck. “Flattery will only get you so far, Cal. I’m not cooking for you today. If anything, you should be cooking for me.” He glances to the right, in the direction of my kitchen, where, a few months back, he cooked a huge steak dinner for me after I escaped from McKinney’s torture shack.
“You know, I would love to cook a three-course dinner for you sometime,” I say, “but I would also love to not poison you. So I think we might want to wait until you’re up for supervision.”
Cooper smiles faintly. “Oh, you’re a kitchen nightmare. I forgot.”
“Say, how are you feeling? Truthfully. Your injuries didn’t look severe, so I didn’t call an ambulance outright, but if you feel like shit, we’ll go to the ER right away.”
Cooper frowns. “I mean, I do feel like shit, but it’s more in the sense of feeling weak than feeling like I’m dying. I don’t think the ER is necessary. Some food, rest, maybe a bandage to hide my shame—that sort of thing.”
I grip his hand tighter. “Cooper,” I say sharply, “you have no reason to be ashamed. You were ambushed by a shapeshifter, another mercenary hired by the vampire camp, like the one who butchered the Jameson trio.”
Cooper’s blue eyes grow wide. “Fuck,” he breathes out, “really?”
“Yes, really. So don’t beat yourself up. It’s not like you were in a fair fight.” I raise my hands to display my bandages and splint. “That same shapeshifter beat the crap out of me with a baseball bat, and Riker had to swoop in and save me with his magic cane sword again. And, oh, by the way…you’re going to need a new coffee table.”
“What?” He struggles to sit up. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Navarro patched me up.” Grasping his shoulder gently, I coax him to lie back down. “Let’s focus on you for now. You want something to eat? I can manage canned soup and a sandwich without burning the apartment down. I think.”
Cooper covers his face with his hands. “Um, okay. Vegetable soup, if you have it.”
“Great. I’ll put that on now.” I stand up and pat the phone on my belt. “Say, do you mind if I call Ella and tell her I found you? She’ll want to drop by and see you, for sure, and I know you probably want a little peace and quiet, but there’s kind of a search party out looking for you.”
“Huh?” Cooper stares at me, mortified. “A search party? Are you fucking serious?”
“Well, Coop, we had no clue where you were. We didn’t”—I swallow thickly—“know if you were still alive. Amy took Delarosa’s team out to search your neighborhood for…”
“My body?” he whispers. “Jesus.”
“Got to admit, I was pretty worried too.”
“Oh, man.” He rakes his fingers down his cheeks. “Please call Ella and tell her I’m all right. I don’t want anybody worried any longer than they need to be.”
“Sure, sure. I’ll make the call as soon as I put the food on.” I reach over to the coffee table, grab the remote, and offer it to Cooper. “In the meantime, why don’t you watch a movie or something, relax a bit?”
Cooper eyes the remote with disdain, unconvinced the TV will improve his mood, but he eventually takes it anyway. “Well, maybe there’s a Breaking Bad rerun on.”
Satisfied he’s okay(ish), I make my way across the hall, heading for the kitchen. But before I pass the threshold, I spy something lying on the floor in the foyer. When I shuffle closer to the object, it coalesces in my vision: a small, crumpled, yellow piece of paper. A sticky note. The kind of note I’ve become accustomed to finding stuck to my front door in the midst of serious DSI cases. The kind of note that has, twice, provided me with crucial information. The kind of note that has, thus far, come with no strings attached.
I have a funny feeling that’s about to change.
Because there’s no way in hell two different people visited my apartment today for two different reasons relating to the same DSI investigation.
The person who left Cooper on my doorstep is also the person who left the note.
Which means…
No, it can’t be. Not all this time.
Which means…
This has to be some kind of sick joke.
Which means…
Out of all the creatures in this world and all the realms of the Eververse—
Which means…
—the one helping me since the Etruscan case can’t have been a vampire.
More mindless than the wraiths I fought last night, I stumble over to the sticky note, sink to one knee, and lift it from the floor with a trembling hand. It sports the same handwriting as before, that casual scrawl you normally use when writing a reminder to stick on the fridge before you step out the door, or to drop on a colleague’s desk so they’ll remember to email you that one report before they leave the office, or to put inside a loved one’s lunchbox, a sweet message, so they don’t forget how much you care during their hectic, busy day. If only these notes were as innocuous. But they aren’t, and they never have been. And they never will be.
This time, there are three lines on the note.
You still have the worst luck, don’t you, kid?
Meet me where we first met, 3:00 PM today.
We need to talk.
&
nbsp; There’s a moment where Cal Kinsey doesn’t exist. I’m a speck of shadow in an endless black void, no body, no mind, no soul, nothing. All around me, there is blank space, no up, no down, no north, no south, no directions whatsoever because direction requires intention, and I have none. I have no features and no thoughts, no hopes, no dreams, no feelings, no strengths or weaknesses, no faults or virtues, no quality beyond the emptiness inside me. No quality other than the scream. The silent scream. The primordial scream. The scream that exists under all other screams, above all other screams, beyond all other screams. It has no sound. It has no end. It’s always there. It just is, that scream…
Fear.
True fear.
Absolute fear.
FEAR.
I’m afraid, and I scream my fear for so long, so loud and so quiet at the same time, overtaking all my senses until the world is black static, that a thousand years could pass me by and I’d still be standing in that foyer, oblivious.
And then, from the darkness, a pinprick of light.
I grasp for it, drowning in the scream. I stretch until the emptiness echoing inside my mind tears like plastic wrap, clinging, and my nonexistent hand brushes the edge of that tiny, negligible light. Brushes, barely, the way the shadow of a bird’s feather brushes you when it flies overhead. Barely, but enough.
The fear recedes like a tide, and all is calm.
So calm. Too calm. A dangerous calm.
Calm before the storm calm, but I don’t realize that yet.
I fold the sticky note in half and shove it in my pocket. Walk to the kitchen, put the soup on the stove, fix a sandwich made from basic ingredients I find in my cabinets. Grab a solitary tray from its place atop the fridge, load it with food, and return to the living room, where Cooper is now lounging comfortably as he watches an old episode of Breaking Bad from the on-demand list on my TV. Set the tray on the coffee table and smile at him. Mumble something about calling Ella. Shuffle back to the foyer. Text Ella instead—Cooper’s at my apartment.
Say in a voice that’s both mine and not mine, familiar and foreign, “Hey, Coop. Something’s come up at the office. We’re having an emergency meeting. Will you be okay here by yourself, or do you want to come with me and lie down in the infirmary?” Empty words. Empty reassurances.
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